A poem’s beginning should be striking and compelling, urgent and invigorating. A reader should want to continue to the next line, and finish the rest of your work. The first line of any piece of poetry not only has a stake in deciding its artistic merit, but also its commercial value. If your first line isn’t interesting enough, no one will bother with the rest. No pressure.
But as a writer, more often than not, your first line simply represents the struggle of making a start, of beating the crisis of the blank Word document, the I-Don’t-Know-What-I’m-Doing stage of any new project. So here are ten great first lines of poetry I collected so that you can analyze what makes them stand out, get inspired to start writing, or simply admire some of the openers to your favorite poems. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical -Allen Ginsberg How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. -Elizabeth Barret Browning Because I could not stop for Death -Emily Dickinson Let us go then, you and I -T.S. Eliot People disappear. And go looking for a place to be looked at. -Alex Dimitrov Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary -Edgar Allen Poe We were very tired, we were very merry -Edna St. Vincent Millay I would like to watch you sleeping -Margaret Atwood Drink to me only with thine eyes -Ben Jonson I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky -John Masefield Written by Sanvitti S.
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